The Ultra-Ex Studio: Redesigning “Urban Green”
Image by Ruth Mandel, GSAPP, MSAAD ‘10
The Product of the long term collaboration with the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning (GSAPP) and Preservation and the Fu School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), this studio accepted the design challenges of the next "Urban Green”wave in the United States, with emphasis on the specificities of neighborhood and building constellations.
The studio explored new categories of micro-scale "infrastructures" combined to form a new design lexicon in accomplishing 50% less waste production; 50% less energy use; 50% less water consumption. Analyses were developed for neighborhoods within Manhattan surrounding the Columbia University Morningside and Medical School complexes.
This studio subscribed to the paradigm encompassed by the ULTRA-Ex program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The ULTRA-x conceptpursues developing understanding of "the dynamic interactions between people and natural ecosystems in urban settings" toward the goal of improving eco-system functionality in urban environments.
The Urban Ecology Studio is a research and training collaboration between the Senior Civil and Environmental Engineering Design Seminar at the SEAS, and the Advanced Architectural Design Studio at the GSAPP. The Urban Ecology Studio trains students with different disciplinary backgrounds to investigate in depth environmental design solutions for cities in the 21st century.
Faculty: Richard Plunz, Patricia Culligan, Nilda Mesa, Richard Gonzalez, Phil Simmons.